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By now everyone is familiar with the glass ceiling—the informal barrier that keeps women out of upper management. In the past few years, researchers have found that women have a better chance of breaking through that ceiling when an organization is facing a crisis—thus finding themselves on what Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam, of the University of Exeter, have termed the “glass cliff.” But the question remains why.

To explore possible answers, we conducted two experiments. In the first we asked 119 college students to read two newspaper articles about an organic food company. The first article discussed the upcoming retirement of the CEO. We created two versions of the piece; in one the company was currently and historically headed by men, and in the other it was headed by women. We also created two versions of the second article, which dealt with the company’s financial status, so that some students read about a company that was growing, others about one that was closing stores and laying people off. We then asked the students to choose between two equally qualified candidates for CEO, one male and one female.

When the company had been led by men and was doing well, 62% of the students who read that scenario chose the male candidate. But when the male-led company was in crisis, 69% chose the female candidate. And when the company had been led by women, there was no difference: The glass cliff disappeared.

Onto a Ledge

CEOs who’ve lived out this trend

Carly Fiorina, Hewlett- Packard, 1999–2005

Patricia Russo, Lucent and Alcatel-Lucent, 2002–2008

Kate Swann, WHSmith, 2003–

Lynn Elsenhans, Sunoco, 2008–

Carol Bartz, Yahoo, 2009–

One thing these results reveal, we believe, is a status quo bias. As long as a company headed by men performs well, there’s no perceived need to change its pattern of male leadership. Only if male leaders have maneuvered an organization into trouble is a switch to a female leader preferred.

Our second experiment was designed to test our hypothesis that attitudes about gender and leadership also help create the glass cliff. We asked 122 students to read an article about a supermarket chain that was either very successful or struggling badly. In both cases the CEO was about to be replaced. The students read descriptions of a male and a female candidate and rated each one’s strength in 10 areas, some having to do with stereotypically female attributes (such as communication skills and the ability to encourage others), others with stereotypically male ones (such as competitiveness and decisiveness). We then asked which candidate they would choose as CEO. We found that when a company is doing well, people prefer leaders with stereotypically male strengths, but when a company is in crisis, they think stereotypically female skills are needed to turn things around. Accordingly, most participants (67%) chose the man to head the successful company, while the majority (63%) thought the woman should take over the company in crisis.

It appears, then, that a company’s leadership history and common assumptions about gender and leadership contribute to the glass cliff. We were especially struck by the finding that the phenomenon does not seem to apply to organizations with a history of female leaders. This suggests that as people become more used to seeing women at the highest levels of management, female leaders won’t be selected primarily for risky turnarounds—and will get more chances to run organizations that have good odds of continued success.

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